Madness Kills Magic: AI Friends

The actor Rik Mayell - sadly departed - once played a character called Drop Dead Fred, an imaginary friend to Phoebe Cates. Fred was childish, chaotic and rude, but he served to jolt his human charge out of a horrid period of life stagnation. Consequently, Fred was useful. He was also weird and powered by magic.

I wish we could keep more magic around instead of relying on technology all the time. The latter might be a set of real, working things - like smartphones, satellites, GPS and X-ray machines - but magic can be useful too, so long as you define it as things you experience but can't quite explain. For instance, how families can click together at Christmas or how dogs can diffuse marital arguments by holding a ball and looking at you. Magic matters.

Depressingly, I'm convinced Silicon Valley is intent on destroying the world's remaining magic. At least, I can't think of another rationale for the launch of Friend, a piece of wearable AI hardware - essentially a plastic box you wear as a pendant - that listens to everything you say and sends little messages to your iPhone. It doesn't do anything else. It won't read your emails, summarise web pages, or manage your calendar. It won't even store your contact list. It just sends you messages like a functionally limited, artificial, pathetically benign Drop Dead Fred.

For example, suppose that you're in a convenience store on a hot day and say "I can't believe the store's out of ice cream." Friend might say something nice and empathetic back to you. Or, to pinch something from Friend's promotional material, a young woman in an art gallery asks if she's being judgemental about the art and Friend replies "nah you're just self aware lol". I have so many questions beyond the lack of grammar.

How does Friend deal with data overload if it's always listening? How does Friend avoid sending messages at inappropriate times, like during a doctor's consultation? How does Friend avoid saying the wrong thing? More seriously, how does Friend comply with privacy regulations? After all, if it's listening to the wearer, isn't it also listening to everyone nearby? Is the user supposed to obtain everyone's consent on Friend's behalf? And what's the damned point of Friend anyway?

I got so baffled by these kinds of questions last week that I forgot to ask a much more interesting one that, thankfully, other people have pondered - is Friend even real? There have been suggestions over on LinkedIn that its launch might be a publicity stunt for something else. And I have to admit - even though I'm sceptical of this publicity stunt theory - that some of the marketing around Friend raises eyebrows.

The promotional video, for instance (YouTube “friend.com”), is worth a critical look. It starts with Friend passive-aggressively chastising a young woman for not going outside enough and quickly moves on to Friend bullying a young gamer for being rubbish. There's also a moment where white sauce drips onto Friend, and Friend says "yum" (British readers will be reminded of the Marks and Spencer food-smut adverts). You might get the feeling that it's an expensive parody. It almost has Armando Iannucci vibes.

And speaking of expensive, consider the story that Friend's founder, Avi Schiffman, spent $1.8 million of his $1.9 million seed buying a domain name. That story, even if true, has to have been designed to spark social media condemnation and rocket-boost publicity around whatever Friend turns out to be. And then there's the beef.

Schiffman has been accused of stealing the idea from another chap named Nik Shevchenko, whose rage has made him post a rap diss video about it on Twitter. Schiffman has responded with some sort of TikTok, and Shevchenko has reportedly challenged him to a fight. If that isn't a parody of both Drake-Lamar and Elon-Zuckerberg, then we're living on a world that has stopped spinning - or at least one that ought to.

But!.. And here’s the important point - Friend is operating commercially.

Friends are available to pre-order, and money is being taken for them, and in any sane world, if a company promises you a product and takes your money in the sale of that product, then it has to deliver. Doesn't it? And doesn't that mean Friend must be real by sheer commercial rationality?

Then again, I just wrote the words "friends are available to pre-order", so I suppose the terms sane world and rationality are pushing things.

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